Clock ticking on North County’s forensic health center

Let’s say $130,000 before Dec. 31 and eventually a lot more, maybe a couple of million in one check.

The money’s not for me but it could be for mine when they’re hurt. It could be for a hurt kid or woman you love. Or a hurt kid or woman you don’t know but feel something for.

As a rule, I never go down this road. Not my job, at least as I describe it, to pull at the heartstrings to loosen purse strings. Even during the holiday season, when gift appeals turn into a frenzy, I refuse to be an obvious rainmaker.

But today, I’m making an exception.

If a critical mass of money isn’t raised in the next month or so, the huge region of North County — its cities, northern reaches of San Diego as well as the unincorporated communities — will turn into a moral deadbeat. If we go there, we ought to be jailed.

Here’s the pitch, boiled down to the salt of the earth.

About 30 years ago, the Child Abuse Program set up shop in Escondido under the umbrella of what is now Palomar Health. Police take children who are believed to have been beaten (or worse) to the Fig Street office.

How many kids? More than 300 a year.

Once there, the children tell (and show) professionals like Cathy McLennan, a nationally esteemed blend of CSI and Mother Teresa, what needs to be told (and shown). This interview, usually the only one, is a crucial link in the chain of events leading to a criminal conviction beyond a shadow of a doubt.

In 1991, the Child Abuse Program fused with a Sexual Assault Response Team, which collects evidence from North County women who have been raped. Not surprisingly, the culture that helps abused children tell their stories expanded to help the legal system work for adult assault victims.

All told, more than 15,000 children, adolescents and adults have walked through the Forensic Health Service’s doors at any time or day of the week. (Staff is always on call, 24/7.)

In North County, no one else performs this indispensable role in the criminal justice system. This is it. Forensic Health goes away, abused children and raped women have to get in cars and leave North County.

OK, let’s talk money.

Since its inception, Forensic Health has received funding directly from law enforcement, a little more than half of its expenses, and the rest (about $200,000 in recent years) has been covered by Palomar as part of its healing mission.

Facing extreme budget austerity, Palomar has been forced to pull the plug on money-losing programs. Gone is the $200,000 annual subsidy for Forensic Health. If that amount isn’t raised by year’s end, the lights go out. Traumatized children will be driven to Rady Children’s Hospital, the only county alternative, and raped women will have to be transported to a facility in El Cajon for evidence collection.

Time is money, we hear. Yes, that’s true for law enforcement, but time and distance are additional cruelties to a victim.

So what can you do?

Maybe you have no money but plenty of moxie. Well, yell (politely) at one or both of North County’s supervisors — Dave Roberts and Bill Horn — and urge them to use discretionary funds to restore Forensic Health’s health.

If you belong to a service organization like Junior League or Rotary or any group with a history of charitable giving, nominate Forensic Health for 911 aid.

Or you can contact the Palomar Health Foundation, which has raised nearly $80,000 toward making up the $200,000 gap, and donate out of your own pocket.

Or if you know someone — if you are someone — looking to make a legacy donation in North County, the kind that generates headlines, consider the look and sound of this: The (Your Name) Forensic Health Service.

The traditional institutions — libraries, hospitals, universities — are where the world-changing named donations typically go.

Understandable. No dark, violent shadows associated with those kinds of ego-gratifying gifts.

But I suspect someone in North County has a history — maybe they know first hand the terrors inflicted upon children and vulnerable women — and they have the means to permanently endow this fragile wing of humanity.

Until that divine intervention, however, the doors need to stay open 24/7. Help the Palomar Health Foundation figure out how to get the right thing done.